For Your Consideration: Twilight System

[s/LaSH]

Greetings to the Forge. I have been referred here for guidance on my Twilight system. Hopefully I'll be able to offer something in return.

Before I start, I'd like to point out that Twilight is technically playable and finished. However, not having much experience in game creation (this is the end of a seven-year period of development, and in no way resembles the starting product) I'd like the input of others before pursuing any other plans (whether just posting the entire text for free, putting together a PDF or even print - I'm surviving as a freelance artist today, but anything I can sell would be good).

You can find the demo version (64 pages) here. It doesn't include magic or racial ability rules right now; I'll probably bring up the subjects here in a while. For now, I'll summarise the mechanic and philosophy here.

Character Creation

Start with Stats. You have three (originally Physical, Mental and Spiritual - changed to Body, Mind and Spirit when I realised that BMS was a less offensive abbreviation). Each stat has a minimum of 1; starting characters normally have 6 points total, but this can really be any number. *** Not purposefully based on TriStat, I hasten to add (didn't know about it til a couple of months ago).

Continue with Attributes. Each stat has three (Body: Strength, Agility, Appearance; Mind: Dedication, Intellect, Presence; Spirit: Power, Channeling, Fate), each rated with a fraction between 1/5 and 5/5 (Spirit attributes can be 0). You have 20/5 to spend on these. This doesn't change - it's always 20/5. The value of an attribute is equal to the stat times the fraction (rounded down, to a minimum of 1, or 0 for spirit attributes), and is what attribute normally means.

Finish with skills. You always have twice as many skill points as stat points. (This ratio might be altered for variant games.) So normally 12 skill points for starting characters.

In Twilight, skills are fairly broad areas like Blade Weapons Group, Stealth, Fire Magic, or Acrobatics. Each has components (in the case of Stealth, things like Silence, Hiding and Infiltration (ie. legerdemain)). You can gain 3 ranks in an individual component instead of spending a point on the skill itself. (This is called a Component Skill.)
 You cannot put more points into a skill than the value of the corresponding attribute (for Stealth, agility; for Fire Magic, Power, etc.). You cannot benefit from a component skill larger than twice the attribute. However, component and 'parent' skills stack.

This creates a basic character. Equipment then adds bonuses to skills.

Actions

When you want to do something, add up your skill ranks and attribute ranks (thus someone without skill will still have a minimum of 1), and roll that many six-sided dice. (This number is easily written down on a character sheet.)

The tactics come in when you apply time management. You have 5 Time Increments (i) available to you at all times; that is, you can be doing 5i worth of things at any one time. An action takes however many increments you spent on it to 'tick' over before it happens. When it happens, you roll the dice, and every die that comes up equal to or lower than the number of increments you spent is a success.

If half or more of your dice are successes, roll the whole lot again, only the target number is one lower (to a minimum of 1), and keep adding up any successes you roll. *** I know this is a little slow, but in my experience the tactical emphasis of the game is frighteningly deep and slow anyway. I did a test fight and in the first 1i alone I saw 3 attacks and a total of 7 moves stacked up in response to one punch - and there were only two fighters. Plus it's open-ended, which I really wanted.

Other Initial Notes

There are two basic defensive maneuvers available that reduce attacks on a point-for-point basis: parry and dodge. You can do both at once. Thus, a smaller (1-3i) attack is often better because it leaves you the option to defend yourself with a good chance of avoiding all damage. On the other hand, a 5i attack leaves you no defenses whatsoever beyond passive armour, but will do massive damage if your opponent doesn't kill you while you're doing it.

Damage is done in the following way. All attacks do non-lethal damage equal to the successes scored after defenses (normally multiplied by a weapon - 2 for a dagger, 6 for a longsword). When you've taken NLD equal to your Body stat, you suffer a -1 penalty to your target numbers on the dice. Some attacks also do lethal damage, which is exactly the same only damage has to meet 10 times your Body stat. These penalties stack. Once you're suffering from 5 penalties, you're unconscious.  Once you've got 5 lethal penalties, you're dead.

You can recover non-lethal damage equal to your Dedication plus Heal (Aid component) skill in 1i. NLD is just an inconvenience in that regard. I call this 'regen'.


That's the gist of Twilight's basic system. What I'm looking for are general pointers:

- I've had comments about the dice pool system, particularly its exploding nature. Is it downright poor (ie. slow and easy to screw up), or is there a quick fix? (I've considered simply rolling one extra die against the new target number: if it's a success, double successes, drop the TN another slot, and roll again.)

- Is the time management system that's the core of Twilight easily comprehensible? It's purposefully simplified from Twilight's ancestor, Nocturne, which used a percentile scale (thus a scientific calculator); does it offer the same versatility and tactics that I imagine?

- Does the damage system make sense? It's supposed to be 'cinematic', in that Bruce Willis can get shot and go down yet be up again in moments with no penalty but an artfully bloodstained singlet. One possible option is giving a choice between lethal and nonlethal damage, so someone could either do permanent damage, or damage that impairs their opponent immediately and effectively, but not both. Would that be better?

- General points about the system I may have overlooked. Don't hesitate to tear it to pieces, please. I know I can't please everyone, but I want Twilight to be as good as possible.

Thanks in advance.

[deadpanbob]

s/LaSH,

Welcome to the Forge!

I'll ask the most commonly asked first questions: What do you envision actually playing the game to be like?  What kind of setting(s) and situation(s) is the system designed for (e.g. High Fantasy, Sci-Fi, etc.)?

If you haven't already, you should read system does matter, and perhaps fantasy heartbreakers and more fantasy heartbreakers.  These are articles on RPG design written by Ron Edwards - and worth a look for anyone attempting RPG design.

My only comment up front is that the Time Increment mechanic and the Exploding Dice - which increase the search and handling time and the tactical complexity of the game - seem to be at odds a little with the wound system and your stated desire to provide a "cinematic" game experience.  If you're going for a fast action paced, over the top, cinematic style - you might want to consider figuring out ways to lower the search and handling time.

Perhaps you could say that every die that exactly equal the TN (as set by the time increments, right?) gets to be re-rolled and compared to the TN -1.  Even this may not lower the search and handling time enough.

You might want to do a search on PACE here at the forge to see a completely different approach (Karma based rather than Fortune based) to fact action.  You might also want to check out the dice pool systems for Sorcerer (from Adept Press) and/or Donjon (Anvilwerks).

Unless you're married to the feel of the current resolution mechanic because it supports a particular asthetic feel - I'd consider dropping it in favor of a simpler dice pool mechanic.

Finally, you might want to check out the Riddle of Steel, for a really fast playing but tactically sophisticated combat resolution.

Cheers,

Jason

EDITED: to add that all of the above references are not intended to scare you off, or to say that your system doesn't matter or that it's "been done before".  It just to say that a lot of discussion here at the Forge revolves around the concepts in the articles, and the games I mentioned might give you some different ideas about the dice mechanics.  The system looks like you've put a good deal of work into it so far - and looks fairly interesting.  Keep us posted.

[s/LaSH]

Thanks, and don't worry, I'm not scared. I'd be quite happy for people to tear it to shreds.

Time increments are really the most important thing in the system, to me. They allow the player tactical choices beyond simply "Attack" (and place great emphasis on defence). I'm aware they add complexity to the system, and I assume that players will not play Twilight if they're seeking blindingly fast combat.

The actual results of the combat, I've found, do a good job of behaving like action movies (as opposed to 'cinematic' gaming), in that important people very rarely get hit at all. If they're going at each other with swords (and are roughly equal), they'll clash, parry, dodge, and unless one of them gets really unlucky, never suffer a wound. It's cinematic in that sense, not particularly fast and furious.

I like to think I've removed a fair chunk of handling time by having no tables beyond 'this is what a skill does' (except for that one towards the back that requires a die throw for psychologically unstable characters, and I'm seriously considering revamping that whole section) and clearly inferrable results just from rolling the dice. You won't experience exploding dice too often, either, because 2i is (to my mind) the most tactically sensible allocation and that's only going to explode once every 3 rolls, on average. (I think. I can't be bothered doing the stats work right now.)

The idea of re-rolling dice that equal the TN does theoretically allow for very high results, but brings the practical ceiling way down (a 5i action would likely only get 1/6th rerolls, as opposed to almost always getting a reroll of all the dice with the 'standard' explosion). And I don't really like the limits that puts on a 5i action. I've considered moving record-keeping of how many successes you've rolled 'into the dice' like I did with time management, to reduce search time, but I can't see any realistic way of doing it... yet. (Previously, you did something like rolling against a standard TN and multiplying successes by the number of increments you were using - I abandoned this because who really knows what 17 times 4 is? It's quicker to count dice. That's what I mean by 'into the dice'.)

Oh, and I find it interesting that the mechanic I use is technically fortune, but statistically veers closer to karma, especially at high levels. Has anyone else commented on this tendency?

I appreciate your input. Now I gotta go watch cartoons (it's hard being a freelance artist, I tells ya). Back later.

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings,

Welcome to the Forge s/LaSH.

Here's my raw, at a glance, first impressions:

For starters let me just say my eyes glazed over around where you started to talk about "fifths" . . .  mainly because you hit us with the "conceptualize" a character then started to use standard sounding examples, as if they are supposed to give us a reference frame, when you have established there is no reference frame.

The entire point of a "concept" system (I've always felt) is the player's are burdened with using their imagination to create a character archetype from scratch.  I hate that about "now come up with a conception" CharGen systems.  My pet peeve, not your fault.

However, based upon what I have read so far, I think you may want to consider editing what you have.  Lighten the load.  And be sure when you say things like:

"Once you've put all these pieces together, you've got a beginning character! Go to it!"

That we actually can, at a glance, without freaking out or having to take our shoes off to do fractions and higher math.   ;)

Also try to edit out things like "Unlike other systems", unless you are actually comparing mechanics.  The section I just block copied that from really didn't need that preamble and, since it was there, it gave me pause to sit back and wonder why it was there.

>expletive deleted<

Are all those groups really necessary??

Wow, the skill write ups... looks like a lot of detail in there.  Taken at a glance. . . Puzzling . . . Wild Living . . . And some that seem rather unique, too.  :)

I want to know more about magic.  The Magic Skill provides some detail, ok actually there's quite a lot in there and I didn't really read every word, but at a glance it looks like this is going to be one massive all-encompassing system?

>expletive deleted<

More about the groups.  Golly gee whiz!

Ugh, the text is too cramped to even try to read the rest from here on out this late/early in the evening!  (Apologies, just looks massively ugly on this end.)

Summary: 9 Attributes depending from the trinary of Body, Mind, Spirit and grouped accordingly.  Not bad.  Yet, at a glance, I have no clue what the core resolution mechanic is.  Doing a boolean search for "core" gets me a bunch of stuff about time keeping, or something, called an "increment".  Ok, but why?  Up front I want to know how to do stuff, what is required to resolve actions. . . ?  Well, sure, I guess it's important to know how actions break down incrementally and all that but how does a character attempt the actions in the first place?!?

My "At a Glance" Score (on a scale of 1-4): 1.7

And that mostly because of formatting.  Editing, using a larger font size, these things would help.  Not necessary, mind you, but couldn't hurt.  As would breaking the text up into something more manageable in a HTML format.  Though, for the size of the MSS, I'd say forget that hassle and just PDF it, if you want/are able.

If not: Do a Google search for "Open Office" or PDF995 for two good freebie type PDF proggies.  (Open Office will be a 60 MB DL, BTW.)  Also, it's all mechanics, which makes for dry reading.  But that also means presentation is everything.

B+ for effort!




Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[s/LaSH]

Thanks, Kester. I'll go through and address concerns from my perspective.

The idea of giving examples under 'concept' was to get away from the idea of archetypes. The idea that archetypes are still possible is implicit, but perhaps I should put in a section dealing with them just in case - put it in front with completed stats and stuff, then explain what it all means and explain how you can do something completely different. Would that make it seem more 'comfortable' and give parameters necessary to gain one's bearings?

"Unlike other systems"... you're right, that's arrogance on my part. It's mostly aimed at d20, of course. I've never played much of any system other than D&D, so the ancestors of Twilight were aimed at 'correcting' the system on a fundamental level. I still think it has something to offer.

The weapon groups... they're an older part of the system, actually, left over from when the system used a calculator. (Roll d100. Add 50. That's the percentage of the predetermined effectiveness you score. Horrible, no?) I've been considering trimming them down to something more sensible like "Blunt, Slashing, Stabbing, Agile, Finesse", and relegating the rest of the distinction to component skills, but from what I've read historical weapon-users did specialise in one very narrow group and wouldn't be too effective outside it. Actually, I can't quite tie weapon groups into the item creation guidelines I drew up - it's a minor nitpick, but one I should look over in future.

The skills... they're all there for a reason - completedness. Perhaps I should include a section talking about which parts aren't necessary for certain styles of game; I just wanted to be complete, cover all the bases. You're not going to need any Wild Living faculty whatsoever in a hack'n'slash game, which I can see some people enjoying under Twilight. Some of the more unique ones buried in poorly-formatted text include the ability to do mental damage, which is basically ridiculing or taunting or overawing your opponent, and (I imagine) could be very useful at times.

The magic system is one thing I'm very proud of. Yes, it's supposed to be universal. Yes, I've run combats using Thor and Superman from the comics in older versions of the rules (that calculator again). And yes, I've updated it since the (locally) infamous Lycanthropy Incident. (Long story short: Duration is best as a unified mechanic not specific to transformations.) Right now, I'm not going to put it online, but I will once I feel the core system is acceptable.

Incidentally, I was reading an Ars Magica FAQ and saw reference to a ritual designed to lift a mountain. The FAQ writer concluded that the level of the ritual could be anywhere from 40 to 200 or more. I thought 'Twilight could do that and I'd know exactly how', did some calculations involving the Air (Kinesis) component, and came out with a specific answer that wouldn't mean anything here (let's just say it's well outside the bounds of starting, intermediate or advanced characters). This could either be seen as Twilight magic beating the 'king' of magic systems, or a crazily inflexible system with no room for dramatic license. It depends on taste.

The text is pretty bad, isn't it? First, I wrote it up in Word. Then I decided I wanted Twilight out there, rather than spend long, long hours converting a DOC into raw text and then formatting it all into html again, so I just saved the DOC as html. The html sucks (I know, I built my webcomic site from just above the automated services on up), but it's 500kb of crappy Microsoft html and that's just not changable.

So I'll look at recompiling the whole thing into PDFs with PDF995, and many thanks for the reference. I should have warned prospective viewers about the horrible layout in the link - I did that elsewhere but forgot here. My bad.

Finally, the way actions and time management hook together. It's simple (if you've worked on the topic for years as I): Declare actions by devoting a certain number of increments to them. When time comes around, roll the dice, and count 1 success for every die that rolls less than or equal to the number of increments you devoted to that action. What kind of action can you commit to? Who knows? All you really need to know is how many dice it's worth. That's why the rest of the skills are there, to give some idea of how many dice you should roll for a given circumstance.

OK, it's a little more complex than that, but that's the gist of it. You could just skip out time management altogether, and set the target number to 3 or some such, but that removes the whole point of the game system.

The rest of the core mechanic should reside in Chapter 1. I should write an 'example of play' section and put it at the end of that chapter, right? That could help with the trickier bits.


I'll work on making Twilight friendlier to the eyes in coming days. Maybe I'll even throw in some illustrations - for free, of course. (Can you believe people actually pay me for art these days?) There are some ideas I just have to get down on paper, like the four-armed chelonian or the Chi Kid. And those are just player characters...

Oh, and if anyone else feels like posting responses, if you echo the sentiments of other responses please write it down - I'd like to know if there's a consensus on any little part of the system. More voices will cause me to think harder and (hopefully) Twilight to get better.

[deadpanbob]

"Unlike other systems"... you're right, that's arrogance on my part. It's mostly aimed at d20, of course. I've never played much of any system other than D&D, so the ancestors of Twilight were aimed at 'correcting' the system on a fundamental level. I still think it has something to offer.

This is why you should read the Fantasy Heartbreakers and More Fantasy Heartbreakers essays if you haven't.  One of the most common things to be seen here on the Forge are the games from new members that amount to "Game X done right" or "How I fixed D&D (or Vampire etc)".

You need to aggressively edit out any references to other RPGs.  Don't waste time telling us about how your game is different from other roleplaying games.  Spend your time telling us how to play Twilight - without referencing other games.

It's not to say that your game doesn't have some good things to offer - like the time increments (relatively unique in my experience - which is fairly limitied I'm afraid).

You seem to have a pretty strong vision of the game, but I wouldn't mind reading it in your own words.  So, what's the point of playing the game, or what are the players going to be doing when playing your game?  

You mention Hack&Slash as one possible alternative, and you've come right out and said this is game started at least in response to perceived weaknesses in D&D - so is this game designed to largely be a Fantasy game?  If so, why should/would anyone play Twilight instead of say, the Riddle of Steel?  Put another way, who is your target audience/what style or type of players do you want your game to appeal to?

Again, these questions are not designed in any way to denegrate your system or the effort you've put into it.  Nor are they designed to get you to abandon your system in favor of one already created.  It just helps, in my experience, to know the answers to these quesitons in order to really focus your design efforts.

When I first came here to the Forge - my game was little more than a Storyteller Heartbreaker (i.e. WW Storyteller system 'done right').  A couple of people here at the Forge were nice enough to point this out to me - and helped me to find a focus for my game.  Now, that focus has evolved since then - but it has remained, well, focused.

Cheers,


Jason

[Mike Holmes]

OK, I'm going to give this game what I refer to as a technical analysis. That means I'll be very in depth, and very critical. Don't take the tone as dismissive, it's not meant to be. I'll mostly be focusing on what's wrong with the game, but that doesn' mean there aren't good parts. Just that the things I don't mention don't need fixing.

Style
Your introduction is mostly advertising. Are you aware of just how many games advertise "system allows you to make anyone or anything you can imagine, right off the bat"? That's akin to saying, "Look, I've made a new plane for 2004, and unlike earlier planes with propellers, this one has jet engines?" While this might, theoretically, in some perfect world, attract some disaffected D&D player, for the most part it comes off as advertising something that's far from unique. I mean, everyone on this forum has played games other than D&D, and I'll doubt that few have not played one that allows you to "create anything". They at least are all aware of several games that have this feature.

My point is, the same as that made above. Comparison, especially to D&D (the whole part about having a conversion section that copmprises one third of the text is really telling here), but any comparison is not a good idea. Even a statment like:

Obviously, you roll dice to determine your success at an action

- says that you're comparing to certain games. Tell us the system's strong points in unexcited terms, and the reader can determine where to go from there. Tell us what your system does, and ignore what other systems do. If you compare, or reference other games that makes your game feel all the more derivative.

You're weapon charts are off with the font I'm using. You might want to consider cells instead of what I'm guessing is tabbing. I like HTML, but why don't you link up the chapter headers to make navigation easier?

Lastly, you mention that there's nobody with a special title of TM or anything, but is there a GM? You say that there are players, characters, and the group, but no mention of a GM. Is that an ommision? Or is this a "GMless" game? If the latter, you have not indicated how many, many things are handled.

Mechanics
I agree with the above statments about your declarations and the resolution. For example, do I declare all of my actions at the beginning of a "round"? I assume that there are something like "rounds" but the text does not say. Given the design of some games, some players might determine from this that in any resolution you have yor five increments, and then it's over. A winner or loser is determined, and there are no further "rounds". Is this your intent? This needs to be clarified. Do you declare all five increments right at the beginning, or as you go along and finish up?

What happens on "ties" where we both are supposed to go? That is, if both you and I declare a 1 increment action (use an abbreviation like, INC, BTW, the small "i" get's lost in the text), who resolves first? Or is it simultaneous. There's a comment about it being LIFO, but that doesn't help. Does that mean that it depends on the order that the action was declared? That if I declare last, I get to resolve first? Can't be it, or everyone will try to outwait everyone else, and nothing wil ever happen. What's it supposed to mean?

Totally indecipherable.

The rules to calculate Steady Action time increments is not only complex, but is fraught with breakpoints. People will take weapons that have draw times, for example that round in their favor (that is, without fractions). This seems to very artificially limit tactically sound weapon choice based on a rounding problem.

you can't do an auto action whenever you feel like it

This is an odd phrase. What you mean to say is something like, "If a skill is used intentionally, then it does not benefit from the Auto Action rule." But this is still odd. Players might interperet it to mean that, if they intentionally imbibe poison during combat, that they would have to divide their combat and saving actions between these two things. Which I don't think is your intention. The criteria should be more what you described earlier, passive actions. Give a better descrption of this, and then you won't need the caveat at all.

Under fast actions it would make sense to note that the Target Number for these is one. It's implied, but not stated.

In general, you mention above that the system is supposed to be "cinematic" in terms of how it encourages players not to get hit at all (and presumable making wounds "realistically" harmful). I'd agree that in movies and even in real life, that the way one wins in combat is mostly not to get seriously injured. This makes sense. But, OTOH, what you're promoting here is what we call the "whiff factor". That is, you get a lot of "you miss, I miss, you miss, I miss" in play. This is not only boring, but makes the character's look like dorks. While it's cool to exchange blows for a bit, in a movie there will be an increasing tension that leads up to the final blow that ends it. This system doesn't have that at all. It's just boredom, boredom, boredom, oh, look, by random chance someone came out on top. How anti-climactic.

In other systems like yours, the usual method is to have some sort of a pacing mechanic that allows for the battle to swing back and forth, say, positionally. Something to keep the tension rising, and something to assure that at some point somebody will get the advantage and win. This keeps combat interesting, and relatively short. Nothing worse than that combat that goes on and on with nothing happening, til nobody cares anymore, and they just want it to end. I'd think about fixing this.

Also, I assume that what you add is your "Practical Attribute" to the rolls. This is unclear in the Core rules section. In fact, given that Practical Attributes seem to usually be fractional, I'm not sure how many dice to roll, as I'm not sure how to round them.

Chargen
Once again, the "archtypes" you suggest pegs you as trying to improve on some certain game (hmm, wonder what that could be).

Wouldn't it be easier to just assign 20 points to the stats, and then calculate Practical Attribute = ATT * STAT / 5 ? I personally think that'd be much less confusing.

Anyhow, from the statment here about how outside fo the section the term Attribute means Practical Attribute, we finally see how it's supposed to work. Let's see, I'll have at most four in my best Stat. So if I stack up some Attribute with five fifths, that will give me a practical attribute of Four. Given that you round down, this means that you're left with all sorts of breakpoints. That is, given a player's selection, he'll be taking his abilities in such a way as to constantly be trying to make them count to the next level of practical attribute.

There are only ten starting combinations for Stats, and only three permutations (1/2/3, 1/1/4, 2/2/2). Lets look at the three permutations.

These are supposed to be "average" characters. Lesse. If I divide my stats evenly, I get (2/2/2). If I divide the fifths evenly, I get two in all of the attributes except for two that are threes. Doesn't much matter, either way, the PA is 1. And the best I can get is a two, and that only by putting five fifths in that attribute. This character's going nowhere fast. Maxing out two stats gets me a total of 11 PA.

Let's look at the extreme option, (1/1/4). Well, no matter what I put in the two one stat attributes they're going to be ones. The only reason to put in something else is to look forward to the Stat going up. So, we'll probably want to caiptalize on the four. In fact, I can put five fifths in all two of these areas and a four in one, and still have points left over to put the other atttibutes at one fifth. This gives me two PAs of a 4, and one three. Now, maybe I should reduce some atts so that I can eventually develop my other abilities up from PA one? Well, going from a 5 fifths to a four fifths reduces my PA by one. So to do so I'm instantly weaker. And what does it get me? Well, I go from a one fifth to a two fifths in that attribute which means that if I put four more points into the stat, I'll have a PA of two in it. As opposed to putting only one point in the original stat and getting one PA. Hmm. Doesn't seem a good trade. Lose a PA to gain the ability to reduce the number of Stat points I need to go up one PA from ten to five. Never going to happen anyhow, so why would I do it.

Actually, maybe it would happen in the game that you'd gain five or ten in a stat. I can't find any rules for stats increasing. There's a chapter on "Training" but it's not about development, but how to use the combat system. So I can't really say. Still, it sounds unlikely. Going with the extreme option gets you a total of 17 PA.

Let's look at the mixed option (1/2/3).  I have a Stat of three, I'll take a one fifth (1PA, because it's the minimum), four Fifths (2PA), or a five fifths (3PA). The two and three are useless to take in the short run again. I think we'll not see them. The two attributes will be set at either five fiths or again it doesn't matter much. Basically, you get the same maxing effects as the lopsided option, but without the last point to support it. Going with the maxed out option here get's you only 14 PA.

Seems a slamdunk for he extreme character. Even the text suggests maxing out some important attributes.

To make things worse, the skill section says that you can only use as many levels of skills into a resolution as you have levels of attributes. Thus attributes have a doubling effect in their capacity. So I have even more incentive to stack. If I take the 1/1/4 character, I have the ability to generate dice pools of 8 dice in two different attributes. If I take the 1/2/3 character, I can have two attributes that can generate six die pools. And if I go with the 2/2/2 character I'll have two attributes that will have 4 dice pools (and the rest will be 2 dice). Note none of this calculates in component skills, but these just stack on top of these numbers, AFAICT.

Is there really an option here?

What sort of skill can you have that only works on yourself? Is this only for magic?

The notes on what to take in terms of skills, and what to buy in terms of equipment are funny. Yes, I suppose it's a good idea for warriors to take skills with weapons. The odd thing is that, with the lack of information on what to do in terms of creating a character, this sort of stuff is going to say to the player, "Build warriors, wizards, thieves, etc". Which I thought you were trying to get away from?

This paragraph is highly problematic:

If, while out adventuring, you discover that you don't have something that would come in really handy, it's normally permissible to ditch some cash-to-hand and find that you bought it anyway. Depending on whom you're playing with, you can extend or limit this rule; some groups might want to purchase everything beforehand, and disallow further purchases as unrealistic, while others might allow a character to find a dagger hidden under the mattress in a dungeon cell after being stripped of all their equipment! However, in the standard interpretation, you can't buy weapons, armour or special tools; you can, however, buy things like rope, torches or bandages. And you had to have the money available to you the last time you were in a shop.

You need to indicate that this needs to be established prior to play.

Later you indicate that a player may own things like a car, and that this doesn't come out of his starting equipment. But under equipment, buying animals costs money. So, I won't even go into the whole question of the pet dog, but I assume that this means that you have to buy a horse if you're a knight? But you don't have to buy a car if you're a private detective? The equipment lists and this rule seem wildly interperable, and subject to abuse. Your idea about belongings like a house not being translatable to game power are interesting. I'm just not sure why you draw the line at houses and cars....

Skills
Too much to go into in detail here. I like the idea of your "friendship" skill. I find the Aversion enfocement of it to be a bit much, though. Friends don't ever fight? Or if they do they do it badly? Hell, I'd give bonuses for friends to do bad things to friends, personally.

Race Focus: Undead? An ability to become better able to deal with a race? Oh, wait, I see, it's a bonus to kill them. I have a strong personal distaste for this rule. If I wasn't absolutely sure at this point that the game was all about killing things, I am now.

The Penalty Skill rule should be in chargen. That said, this is highly abusable.

I do like that you're clear in that skills can be used to substitute for player ability in areas like social ability and problem solving. But it's the clarity I like, not the specific choice. You should be aware that a lot of people think that rules like this detract from RPGs because they interfere with the player's need to role-play first person such situations. I think it's a valid choice, but not one that's very popular.

Combat
You need a good character sheet for recording damage given the injury rules.

People who are unconscious are ugly? That is, they have a penalty to their appearance rating that makes them unable to succeed at an appearance roll? Hmm.

Your Mental and Spiritual Damages are quirky, but probably work. I kinda like the idea, but some of the execution is really ideosyncratic.

If I'm uphill from an opponent, and I take 5 INC to hit, thus making the TN 6, do I automatically get success on all dice? I didn't note any other bonuses, but I don't suppose that they're precluded. So this is an issue.

It took me reading the Weapon skill rules to find out how to actually do damage. I sorta like that conceptually, but with a section on damage, etc, it seems very confusing.

I have some general ideas about how the whole combat system seems to work, but since I don't understand the order of declaration and resolutions, etc, I can't really validly comment.

I can say that "weapons are heavy" is neither true in real life, or in movies.

Summary
I started out thinking that this wasn't a Hearbreaker. Now I have to agree with the others that you need to refer to those essays.

You have some really interesting ideas, but they're getting bogged down in some really odd assumptions. With work you might have something here. But you really ought to consider the goals of the project before trying to make and fixes.

Mike

[deadpanbob]

s/LaSH,

For what it's worth, Mr. Holmes is probably the Forgeite who most influenced my game design ideas.  I came here with a mostly complete (I thought) Storyteller Heartbreaker with lots of issues similar to your own.

Mr. Holmes did a detailed technical analysis of my game as well - which when I thought back and considered it allowed me to free my mind from all of the assumptions/personal preferences and "doing Storyteller right" attitudes I'd buried into my game.  "There is no spoon".

I strongly second Mike's contention that you need to first and foremost step back and thing about the point of the game  - the overall premise of the game.

Heck, you can take a look at Mr. Holmes' own game Synthesis, for examples of how to state a clear premise of play up front and to avoid comparing your game to others either explicitly or implicitly.

I also wanted to jump in and agree with Mike about the rules seeming to enforce a lot more caution than feels "Cinematic" with the high wiff factor.  In terms of the pacing mechanic, that game PACE I mentioned has it built right into the primary mechanic of the game.  The Riddle of Steel, and Ars Magica (2nd Ed) also have such mechanics built into the combat system - although it's a lot more spelled out in the latter.

You might also want to get a copy of Daniel Pond's Wusu at his website.  Or heck, even some of his free rpgs.  Anyway, he takes a different approach to the whole Cinematic action thing in Wusu that maybe warrants a look.

Throwing all these sources at you can seem counter-intuitive at first.  But trust me, the more games you read and play, the more you'll begin to think in different ways about your own game.

Finally, since Mr. Holmes is too modest, I'd suggest that you look at Mike's Standard Rant #1: Designers! Know your hobby!.

I really do think you may have something worthwhile in your time increments mechanic - but you may have to revise nearly everything else around this concept.

Cheers,



Jason

[Mike Holmes]

"There is no spoon".

I strongly second Mike's contention that you need to first and foremost step back and thing about the point of the game  - the overall premise of the game.

Heck, you can take a look at Mr. Holmes' own game Synthesis, for examples of how to state a clear premise of play up front and to avoid comparing your game to others either explicitly or implicitly.

Everybody does it. I wrote the text of Synthesis almost as a test of my ability to resist the Matrix once I had realized that I too was mesmerized by it. And even then...thank goodness for editors.

I'll say that again. Everyone makes this mistake until it's beaten out of them.

In terms of the pacing mechanic, that game PACE I mentioned has it built right into the primary mechanic of the game.  The Riddle of Steel, and Ars Magica (2nd Ed) also have such mechanics built into the combat system - although it's a lot more spelled out in the latter.

Note that he's giving you examples of completely different games that do these things well. You can incorporate these principles into any design.

Finally, since Mr. Holmes is too modest, I'd suggest that you look at Mike's Standard Rant #1: Designers! Know your hobby!.

That's the first time anyone's claimed that! Modest? Shirley, you jest!

Anyhow, I was just waiting for him to say something that really indicated that he hadn't looked at many sources. For all I know, he's really well read, but still want's to tackle the D20 Giant.

Mike

[deadpanbob]

That's the first time anyone's claimed that! Modest? Shirley, you jest!

Anyhow, I was just waiting for him to say something that really indicated that he hadn't looked at many sources. For all I know, he's really well read, but still want's to tackle the D20 Giant.

Don't call me Shirley, damnit!

s/LaSH, I'm sorry, I did jump the gun.  For all I know, you've read lots and lots of RPG's and, as Mike said, are tackling the d20 Giant.  Still a good rant to read, but I'll back off now and give you a chance to digest everything we've thrown at you.

Again, I want to encourage you because I think the Time Increment thing has real possibilities (I'm a system/mechanics junkey when it comes to RPG's ;-0 ), and I'd like to see it more fully developed and in the context of a more coherent game.

Bear in mind that some of the critques that are being offered are from people who haven't sat with you and played this game.  I know it can be very frustrating when you have a very clear and coherent idea about how the game works - and it works clearly and coherently when you are playing/running the game.  But sometimes it can be tough to get that message across, and like Mike says, that's what editing is for.

Cheers,



Jason

[Jeffrey Miller]

dpb, you beat me to the Shirley line, dammit ;)

Bear in mind that some of the critques that are being offered are from people who haven't sat with you and played this game.  I know it can be very frustrating when you have a very clear and coherent idea about how the game works - and it works clearly and coherently when you are playing/running the game.  But sometimes it can be tough to get that message across, and like Mike says, that's what editing is for.

I'll just pipe up and says its also a great litmus test for the "obviousness" of your ideas.  If the great brainstorm that is the shining crown of your system (at least, in your eyes) isn't what people grab on to, but instead focus on another, almost throw-away aspect you cobbled together at 3am to patch a hole, then maybe that patch-work mechanic is what you should reexamine.

Unplayed/unfamiliar feedback is also illustrative of your ability to write.  I /used/ to think I wrote in a clear, easy-going style until some harsh critiques came my way, at which point I realized that my casual writing style was impacting my ability to communicate important ideas in an impactful way.  Not saying that's the case here, mind you, merely that by examining the feedback you get, you can learn quite a bit about the actual nature of your game as others perceive it.  

-j-

[s/LaSH]

You seem to have a pretty strong vision of the game, but I wouldn't mind reading it in your own words.  So, what's the point of playing the game, or what are the players going to be doing when playing your game?  

You mention Hack&Slash as one possible alternative, and you've come right out and said this is game started at least in response to perceived weaknesses in D&D - so is this game designed to largely be a Fantasy game?  If so, why should/would anyone play Twilight instead of say, the Riddle of Steel?  Put another way, who is your target audience/what style or type of players do you want your game to appeal to?

Twilight has no strictly-defined setting. That's largely on purpose. I could have given it a heavily-detailed world with a medieval or post-apocalyptic theme, but in my mind that would impose necessary restrictions on how people percieve their options. In theory, you could play Star Wars or Star Trek with it, but I haven't completed rules for vehicles and things yet.

Has anyone read Eric Van Lustbader's Pearl Saga? It's a weird hybrid of scifi and fantasy and it gave me certain ideas as to things I could do with Twilight.

In that sense (thinking on my feet here), the target is people who want to break the conventions and do something different with setting and characters. (To be honest, it's easy to reduce this to 'kewl skillz', and it largely relies on the racial skills I haven't posted yet. The option to create weird new societies is at least implied in the rules. However, new and unusual ways to kill stuff is a large appeal of the system.)

When you're actually playing Twilight, a lot of time will be spent strategising. It's just the way the system seems to work - you enter combat, you weigh your options and try to commit to a course of action that will cause harm to your enemies while minimising the risk to yourself. I use combat as the example because, in my experience, combat is where most rules are needed; people know how to talk, and can simulate it fairly easily around a table, but fighting a dragon isn't as easy to do over pizza.

So in that sense, I see people who want a deep combat system with choices between offense and defense playing Twilight.

Twilight also offers more unusual abilities, not least of which is the Command skill, particularly the Influence component. This provides a method for altering the behaviour of others through sheer force of will. I'll admit, it's clunkier than I'd like right now. However, the main object was to provide a completely different way of waging war - you could easily practice this over dinner at a hotel restaurant.

This aspect removes the need to kill your enemies from the system; you can cow them instead. It's still primarily about conflict, and violent conflict at that. However, it doesn't have to be.

In that sense, people will play Twilight who want to enter life-and-death situations and not come out of it because they carry an M-16, but because their wits were about them and their inner fortitude was mighty. Or something; you get the idea.

The magic rules (not yet online) are another thing I'm proud of because they allow for nearly any effect imaginable. I won't brag too much about them until I've got them online, but they offer a lot more flexibility to the characters.

In summary: Twilight is intended to provide a deep framework for combat, in a traditional adventurous sort of way, but at the same time promote imagination and allow non-standard problem solutions. It's targeted at people who don't mind complexity in the name of depth, and at those people who want a little more latitude that 'kill the monster or run away'. And those who enjoy deep magic systems will enjoy this one.

Does that sound about right?

Again, these questions are not designed in any way to denegrate your system or the effort you've put into it.  Nor are they designed to get you to abandon your system in favor of one already created.  It just helps, in my experience, to know the answers to these quesitons in order to really focus your design efforts.

When I first came here to the Forge - my game was little more than a Storyteller Heartbreaker (i.e. WW Storyteller system 'done right').  A couple of people here at the Forge were nice enough to point this out to me - and helped me to find a focus for my game.  Now, that focus has evolved since then - but it has remained, well, focused.

From all the comments I've recieved, I think the time management system is both the hardest and the most unique concept in Twilight. That's probably where I should be focusing, correct? First order of business, then, is to make the concept understood.

I'll be back to address other posts later in the evening, probably one by one.

[s/LaSH]

This is going to be a huge post. Apologies in advance.

Style
Your introduction is mostly advertising. Are you aware of just how many games advertise "system allows you to make anyone or anything you can imagine, right off the bat"? That's akin to saying, "Look, I've made a new plane for 2004, and unlike earlier planes with propellers, this one has jet engines?" While this might, theoretically, in some perfect world, attract some disaffected D&D player, for the most part it comes off as advertising something that's far from unique. I mean, everyone on this forum has played games other than D&D, and I'll doubt that few have not played one that allows you to "create anything". They at least are all aware of several games that have this feature.

My point is, the same as that made above. Comparison, especially to D&D (the whole part about having a conversion section that copmprises one third of the text is really telling here), but any comparison is not a good idea. Even a statment like:

Obviously, you roll dice to determine your success at an action

- says that you're comparing to certain games. Tell us the system's strong points in unexcited terms, and the reader can determine where to go from there. Tell us what your system does, and ignore what other systems do. If you compare, or reference other games that makes your game feel all the more derivative.

Point definitely taken.

You're weapon charts are off with the font I'm using. You might want to consider cells instead of what I'm guessing is tabbing. I like HTML, but why don't you link up the chapter headers to make navigation easier?

I shall make PDFs soon and turn 'twilight.html' into a navigation hub between individual chapters. That should make things easier to read.

Lastly, you mention that there's nobody with a special title of TM or anything, but is there a GM? You say that there are players, characters, and the group, but no mention of a GM. Is that an ommision? Or is this a "GMless" game? If the latter, you have not indicated how many, many things are handled.

Again, I guess I'm being too general for my own good. The 'group' refers to the decision-making arbitrator, whether an individual or group; by using 'group' I'm trying to take emphasis off one person who dictates all terms of the game world and put a little more onus for thought about the rules and situations of the setting on the players as well. I've got that noted down for revision.

Mechanics
I agree with the above statments about your declarations and the resolution. For example, do I declare all of my actions at the beginning of a "round"? I assume that there are something like "rounds" but the text does not say. Given the design of some games, some players might determine from this that in any resolution you have yor five increments, and then it's over. A winner or loser is determined, and there are no further "rounds". Is this your intent? This needs to be clarified. Do you declare all five increments right at the beginning, or as you go along and finish up?

What happens on "ties" where we both are supposed to go? That is, if both you and I declare a 1 increment action (use an abbreviation like, INC, BTW, the small "i" get's lost in the text), who resolves first? Or is it simultaneous. There's a comment about it being LIFO, but that doesn't help. Does that mean that it depends on the order that the action was declared? That if I declare last, I get to resolve first? Can't be it, or everyone will try to outwait everyone else, and nothing wil ever happen. What's it supposed to mean?

Totally indecipherable.

I will endeavour to make this easier to understand. Let me try again, and if I'm successful I'll write it into the core document.

Time management. The hardest and the most important part of Twilight. Imagine that time is segmented into even little pieces stretching forever into the future. These pieces are called Increments (INC).

You always have 5INC available to you. This neither increases nor decreases. When you commit to actions, some of these INC are tied up, and when the actions finish they're released.

Actions take INC to perform. It doesn't matter how many, so long as you don't have actions taking up more than 5INC at once. When you declare an action, simply remember when you declared it and how long it was.

An action 'happens' a number of increments into the future equal to the INC spent on them. When this happens, roll the dice and calculate your results. (The die mechanic is explained later.)

You can 'respond' to any action taken by spending available INC at that time. A response always happens before the action it is responding to.

Initiative (sorely lacking from the current version): At the start of a period of time where increments are important, like combat, the character with the highest Agility may choose to pass or act. If they pass, the next most agile character may choose similarly, until if all but one characters have passed that character must commit to some action. At all times, the character with the highest Agility gets first choice as to whether to respond or pass (even to a pass). Most often, the fastest such character will actually end up going last so they can respond to any situation that arises, but this will not always be the case.

Example not bothering with actual results, just time management
Set and Isis are Twilight characters. Set is faster and chooses to pass, thus Isis must act first. She attacks with 3 INC. (She therefore has 2 INC free and available.) Set chooses to counterattack with 1 INC. Isis can respond with both block and dodge at 1INC, and chooses to do so. Set commits to no further actions.

As responses happen first, Isis rolls her Dodge and Parry first. Set rolls his attack, but subtracts the extant Dodge and Parry results from his success.

Isis defends herself well. At the end of INC 1, she's taken no damage. There are still 2 INC until her 3 INC attack resolves. Because their 1 INC actions have finished, Set has 5 INC available to him again, and Isis has the 2 INC not bound up in her 2 INC attack.

On the second INC (INC 2):
Set declares a 2 INC attack. Isis responds with a 2INC block, but is now out of INC - she's extended herself to the maximum. Set in turn responds with another 2 INC attack using his other hand, and a 1 INC dodge with his single remaining increment. Because Isis cannot respond, at the end of INC 2 his dodge is the only thing to resolve and he notes down the penalty it will apply to Isis' attack.

On INC 3:
Set declares another 1 INC dodge, and is once again out of increments.

At the end of INC 3:
Set's latest 1 INC dodge resolves first; then his second attack; then Isis' block; then his first attack; then Isis' 3 INC attack. Set is likely to reduce Isis' abilities with damage before she even gets to roll her big attack.


There. Is that any clearer? Would it help if I made diagrams (in some shape or form)? The use of a whiteboard at the gaming table might become important...

The rules to calculate Steady Action time increments is not only complex, but is fraught with breakpoints. People will take weapons that have draw times, for example that round in their favor (that is, without fractions). This seems to very artificially limit tactically sound weapon choice based on a rounding problem.

This somewhat assumes that adventurers don't wander dangerous situations with weapons unsheathed. It will come up from time to time, but hopefully not all that often. That said, I see where you're coming from. I'd like to think that weapon weight, lethality and special abilities are all more important than how quickly you can draw your sword; however, in some cases it may become important. The granularity of the system becomes important, especially at low levels.

In general, you mention above that the system is supposed to be "cinematic" in terms of how it encourages players not to get hit at all (and presumable making wounds "realistically" harmful). I'd agree that in movies and even in real life, that the way one wins in combat is mostly not to get seriously injured. This makes sense. But, OTOH, what you're promoting here is what we call the "whiff factor". That is, you get a lot of "you miss, I miss, you miss, I miss" in play. This is not only boring, but makes the character's look like dorks. While it's cool to exchange blows for a bit, in a movie there will be an increasing tension that leads up to the final blow that ends it. This system doesn't have that at all. It's just boredom, boredom, boredom, oh, look, by random chance someone came out on top. How anti-climactic.

In other systems like yours, the usual method is to have some sort of a pacing mechanic that allows for the battle to swing back and forth, say, positionally. Something to keep the tension rising, and something to assure that at some point somebody will get the advantage and win. This keeps combat interesting, and relatively short. Nothing worse than that combat that goes on and on with nothing happening, til nobody cares anymore, and they just want it to end. I'd think about fixing this.

I thought about this. Does the mental damage ability provided by Command (Influence) resolve some of this disability? It can quickly remove a combatant's effectiveness in certain areas, which can then be exploited. There's no way to parry or dodge this damage. You can regen the damage fairly quickly, but is it fast enough and can you justify using your resources on regen instead of physical defense or offense?

It makes combat less about hitting someone and more about trying to enrage them to lower their guard, or scare them so they turn and flee (heedless of defense). I thought it was quite a nice trick. Does it work?

Also, I assume that what you add is your "Practical Attribute" to the rolls. This is unclear in the Core rules section. In fact, given that Practical Attributes seem to usually be fractional, I'm not sure how many dice to roll, as I'm not sure how to round them.

I'll rewrite that bit. The idea behind the fractions is that they're only used to derive the attribute values from the stats. You will likely only need them when upgrading a character (traditionally done between sessions, I believe). The actual values are what you use at all times - neat clean whole numbers. They're how you calculate skill maximums.

When time comes to roll dice, add the nice, clean actual attribute value to the skill ranks and any bonuses and roll that many dice. Again, in most cases, this number doesn't change during a session - it might if you pick up a new sword, but the Attribute + Skill total almost never changes during a session. Hence I believe I advised somewhere to write down that total because that's the most important one.

Chargen
Once again, the "archtypes" you suggest pegs you as trying to improve on some certain game (hmm, wonder what that could be).

I like to think they're obvious archetypes. There are probably finer, more specialised archetypes, however, ones that ignite the imagination like Bladedancer, Lumbering Hulk What Has An Axe, or Archer just under the 'fighter' heading, and Twilight can easily mix and match so you get other archetypes like Shadow Thief (who isn't a pure mage, but uses magic abilities to walk through walls and avoid guards). I'm making a note to provide fully detailed archetypes in the front of that section now. This should also address the later concern that 'suggested equipment' reinforces certain boring archetypes.

Wouldn't it be easier to just assign 20 points to the stats, and then calculate Practical Attribute = ATT * STAT / 5 ? I personally think that'd be much less confusing.

It does have the problem that you don't always get a neat N/5 fraction all the time. However... see my next comment.

Anyhow, from the statment here about how outside fo the section the term Attribute means Practical Attribute, we finally see how it's supposed to work. Let's see, I'll have at most four in my best Stat. So if I stack up some Attribute with five fifths, that will give me a practical attribute of Four. Given that you round down, this means that you're left with all sorts of breakpoints. That is, given a player's selection, he'll be taking his abilities in such a way as to constantly be trying to make them count to the next level of practical attribute.

(snip)

Actually, maybe it would happen in the game that you'd gain five or ten in a stat. I can't find any rules for stats increasing. There's a chapter on "Training" but it's not about development, but how to use the combat system. So I can't really say. Still, it sounds unlikely. Going with the extreme option gets you a total of 17 PA.

Let's look at the mixed option (1/2/3).  I have a Stat of three, I'll take a one fifth (1PA, because it's the minimum), four Fifths (2PA), or a five fifths (3PA). The two and three are useless to take in the short run again. I think we'll not see them. The two attributes will be set at either five fiths or again it doesn't matter much. Basically, you get the same maxing effects as the lopsided option, but without the last point to support it. Going with the maxed out option here get's you only 14 PA.

Seems a slamdunk for he extreme character. Even the text suggests maxing out some important attributes.

To make things worse, the skill section says that you can only use as many levels of skills into a resolution as you have levels of attributes. Thus attributes have a doubling effect in their capacity. So I have even more incentive to stack. If I take the 1/1/4 character, I have the ability to generate dice pools of 8 dice in two different attributes. If I take the 1/2/3 character, I can have two attributes that can generate six die pools. And if I go with the 2/2/2 character I'll have two attributes that will have 4 dice pools (and the rest will be 2 dice). Note none of this calculates in component skills, but these just stack on top of these numbers, AFAICT.

Is there really an option here?

A very valid point. There is actually a small section entitled Experience at the end of chargen that describes how to advance characters. However... the weakness of beginning characters is fairly evident.

One possible fix involves greatly advancing the starting character. What say a beginning character's stats are defined with 30 points, in 5-point increments? So the minimum you can have in a stat is 5, then 10, etc. This means that you can quickly figure attribute values and they're guaranteed not to have wasted points. Is this worthwhile as a starting default?

What sort of skill can you have that only works on yourself? Is this only for magic?

There is a big table of self-only magic, yes. However, it can also be used to augment other skills, such as Heal. The Heal skill, as written, allows you to use it on anyone. If you took Heal (Self-only), however, you'd still be capable of using healing on people (it can be used untrained), you'd only get the skill bonus if you were using it on yourself. I'll go through and clearly denote which skills are suited as self-only.

This paragraph is highly problematic:

If, while out adventuring, you discover that you don’t have something that would come in really handy, it’s normally permissible to ditch some cash-to-hand and find that you bought it anyway. Depending on whom you’re playing with, you can extend or limit this rule; some groups might want to purchase everything beforehand, and disallow further purchases as unrealistic, while others might allow a character to find a dagger hidden under the mattress in a dungeon cell after being stripped of all their equipment! However, in the standard interpretation, you can’t buy weapons, armour or special tools; you can, however, buy things like rope, torches or bandages. And you had to have the money available to you the last time you were in a shop.

You need to indicate that this needs to be established prior to play.

Later you indicate that a player may own things like a car, and that this doesn't come out of his starting equipment. But under equipment, buying animals costs money. So, I won't even go into the whole question of the pet dog, but I assume that this means that you have to buy a horse if you're a knight? But you don't have to buy a car if you're a private detective? The equipment lists and this rule seem wildly interperable, and subject to abuse. Your idea about belongings like a house not being translatable to game power are interesting. I'm just not sure why you draw the line at houses and cars....

It's something I should put more detail into, yes. And I should definitely emphasise the fact that if only one person in the group owns any house at all that's probably unbalanced. Yes, you should buy a horse if you're a knight. No, you probably shouldn't if your group is all knights or a band of adventurers who happen to get from town to dungeon by means of horse. Yes, it's wildly interprable. I should offer a few 'economic archetypes' to demonstrate.

Skills
Too much to go into in detail here. I like the idea of your "friendship" skill. I find the Aversion enfocement of it to be a bit much, though. Friends don't ever fight? Or if they do they do it badly? Hell, I'd give bonuses for friends to do bad things to friends, personally.

Race Focus: Undead? An ability to become better able to deal with a race? Oh, wait, I see, it's a bonus to kill them. I have a strong personal distaste for this rule. If I wasn't absolutely sure at this point that the game was all about killing things, I am now.

That's not entirely true. To be perfectly honest, it's fairly closely based on the D&D3e ranger ability, but there are a lot more skills that just killing things in Twilight. It will make you better at killing things, but at the same time it will make you better at learning what makes them tick (Command), what they find attractive (Distract), what they're better at sensing (Stealth)... you don't have to use it in combat at all. "It's all right, people, I know guardian carnophages. I'll just throw a rock into the bushes and sneak past while they're distracted; their sense of sight is attrocious." I will, however, make a note to change Race Focus to Creature Knowledge and include rules on determining characteristics of members of that group from the skill.

The Penalty Skill rule should be in chargen. That said, this is highly abusable.

Noted. I tried to make penalties that were largely obvious and commonly had nasty effects on characters, but I will note down that groups should be very careful with penalty skills.

I do like that you're clear in that skills can be used to substitute for player ability in areas like social ability and problem solving. But it's the clarity I like, not the specific choice. You should be aware that a lot of people think that rules like this detract from RPGs because they interfere with the player's need to role-play first person such situations. I think it's a valid choice, but not one that's very popular.

Noted. Note to self: Add that big note explaining how skills are optional within a group and things either unneccessary or out-of-mode (like roleplaying) can be done away with. Mostly, they're just there for the people who don't really role-play too well and need a little nudge.

Combat
You need a good character sheet for recording damage given the injury rules.

People who are unconscious are ugly? That is, they have a penalty to their appearance rating that makes them unable to succeed at an appearance roll? Hmm.

Your Mental and Spiritual Damages are quirky, but probably work. I kinda like the idea, but some of the execution is really ideosyncratic.

I realised recently I don't actually have reaction rules. Another thing to add. They'll probably be auto actions, and unaffected by wound penalties (unless you reason that, were Elle MacPherson covered in blood and making horrible ratcheting noises through a hole in her lungs, she wouldn't be all that hot any more). Appearance isn't just about looking good, though, it also covers physical coordination in the field of 'looking cool'. Think the difference between wuxia films and kung fu designed to actually hurt people badly in a short amount of time - both types of kung fu are probably going to kick my butt, but they work in completely different ways.

The damage rules are kinda clunky. I'm considering making a sheet made up of little boxes that can be used as a damage record - rule lines down the page, and every five lines is a line break, so you have the five damage levels neatly delineated for ticking off. It'd remove horrible pencil stains from one small area of the character sheet, that's for sure.

If I can think of a way to improve mental damage, by the way, I will. As it currently stands, way too much bookkeeping for my tastes. The philosophy behind it is sound, but that's about all I can say for it.

If I'm uphill from an opponent, and I take 5 INC to hit, thus making the TN 6, do I automatically get success on all dice? I didn't note any other bonuses, but I don't suppose that they're precluded. So this is an issue.

As it currently stands, yes, you do get automatic successes. You're virtually guaranteed to get nearly all successes with a 5i action, but with TN6 that guarantee is manifest. About the only defense I can make is that you'll normally die before completing a 5i action if your enemies know their stuff, but that's probably not good enough. I think, all things considered, that a TN above 5 counts as 5 but rerolls from its actual value, so the aforementioned 5i action would have TN 5 but if the pool exploded it would have TN 5 again, then TN 4 and progress normally.

It took me reading the Weapon skill rules to find out how to actually do damage. I sorta like that conceptually, but with a section on damage, etc, it seems very confusing.

I have some general ideas about how the whole combat system seems to work, but since I don't understand the order of declaration and resolutions, etc, I can't really validly comment.

I can say that "weapons are heavy" is neither true in real life, or in movies.

If combat is included in an 'example of play' in chapter 1, would that straighten things out? I'd make reference to where to read more about certain skills (like those weapon skills).

Yeah, weapons are actually as light as they can be. However, there is a handling difference between even a light rapier and a kitchen knife - a battleaxe is going to have a marked difference to both. They won't break your arms, but weapons will slow you down ever so slightly during combat. The 'weapon weight penalty' is my answer to claymores versus dirks - a claymore will cut you in half, but a dirk will hit you first. (It actually grows out of the vastly more complex pregenitor to Twilight known only as Nocturne, in which the time scale was far finer and the idea of committing really, really tiny attacks that added up just as fast as big ones was abhorrent to me. The weight rule was a quick fix I liked so much I kept.)

Summary
I started out thinking that this wasn't a Hearbreaker. Now I have to agree with the others that you need to refer to those essays.

You have some really interesting ideas, but they're getting bogged down in some really odd assumptions. With work you might have something here. But you really ought to consider the goals of the project before trying to make and fixes.

Mike

I've read the essays. To be frank, I'm only now understanding them with the comments in this post. Hopefully, I'll be able to retool Twilight and give it a nice, unique coat of paint.

Hopefully I've also given some little insight into the design processes and goals I had for Twilight. Also I hope I didn't give anyone brain siezures having to read all this text. It's taken me a couple of hours to go through and accurately respond to just this one post. A very useful couple of hours I hasten to add, although I gotta go sleep now... more later.

[Mike Holmes]

I shall make PDFs soon and turn 'twilight.html' into a navigation hub between individual chapters. That should make things easier to read.

Truthfully, I like to read online, so I like HTML over PDF usually. But anything to make navigation easier. How about both?

The 'group' refers to the decision-making arbitrator, whether an individual or group; by using 'group' I'm trying to take emphasis off one person who dictates all terms of the game world and put a little more onus for thought about the rules and situations of the setting on the players as well. I've got that noted down for revision.

Uh, I'm probably just daft, but that seemed very general, still. Yes or no, is there a single player with powers like a GM? Or is it optional?

You always have 5INC available to you. This neither increases nor decreases. When you commit to actions, some of these INC are tied up, and when the actions finish they're released.

Actions take INC to perform. It doesn't matter how many, so long as you don't have actions taking up more than 5INC at once. When you declare an action, simply remember when you declared it and how long it was.

I'd really suggest some sort of recordkeeping, and protocol to keep this all straight. "Just remember" isn't gong to work for a GM with more than one NPC going.

An action 'happens' a number of increments into the future equal to the INC spent on them. When this happens, roll the dice and calculate your results. (The die mechanic is explained later.)

OK, one thing you ought to do is to have separate terms for time and actions. Something like Effort, and Increments. The first being the amount of INC being put into an action, and the second being the when. So you'd say something like, "If a player puts three Effort into an action then it will occur three Increments later." That's just clearer.

You can 'respond' to any action taken by spending available INC at that time. A response always happens before the action it is responding to.

Cool, but this sort of thing neccessitates the above mentioned protocol even more.  

Initiative (sorely lacking from the current version): At the start of a period of time where increments are important, like combat, the character with the highest Agility may choose to pass or act.

And in each INC where a player can declare actions, right?

If they pass, the next most agile character may choose similarly, until if all but one characters have passed that character must commit to some action. At all times, the character with the highest Agility gets first choice as to whether to respond or pass (even to a pass). Most often, the fastest such character will actually end up going last so they can respond to any situation that arises, but this will not always be the case.

When doing a rule like this, it's so rare for the player with Initiatve to not go last, that it's worth making that the default so that you can skip asking. Make the rule "Highest goes last unless he interrupts to say that he want's to declare first."

But what about ties? Roll off each INC there's two tieing participants. Do you want to put in a tiebreaking stat, first? Or maybe roll once for the whole combat? Lot's of options, but you have to select one.

BTW, this seems to make a high agility crucial. Perhaps more important than anything else.

{Snip example}
There. Is that any clearer? Would it help if I made diagrams (in some shape or form)? The use of a whiteboard at the gaming table might become important...

Clearer? Yes, much. Clear? Well. From throwing a little math at this, I see problems. First, some asumptions. It seems to me that damage is multiplied by weapon mod and then divided by armor? Do I have that right? What this means is that, breakpoints aside, two successed scored at once do the same as two one-success attacks (I make all this distiction because in a subtractive armor situation, this isn't true). Can I make as many attacks as I want to make simultaneously? If so, then the best option is to make five INC 1 attacks every INC. You get the same damage as doing one Five INC attack, but you get to do it every single INC.

Another reason that you want to declare your attack last is that then it occurs first if it occurs in the same INC. That is, if I declare a INC 1 attack, and then you declare an INC 1 attack, in INC 1, you'll get to go first given the LIFO rule. What I envision is that the GM should have a page numbered for INC, and list declared actions. It'd look like this:

INC 1
Set Attacks 1
Isis Dodges 1

INC 2


INC 3
Isis Attacks 3


Etc.

So, each INC should go like this.
1. Determine Initiative (assuming that this has to be done per round; might be something you can do once per combat).
2. In order from lowest to highest each player declares actions. Player may commit as many uncommitted INC as he has remaining.
2.a. After each player declares an action, each player may declare a reaction, starting with the lowest player and going up in Initiative order.
3. Record each action on the chart with INC 1 actions being recorded for the current INC, and those with higher amounts for the appropriate later INC.
4. Resolve those actions for the INC starting with the last listed for the INC, and then moving up the list. Defenses must indicate what attack they are affecting, and mark the results next to that attack.
4.a. After resolving an action, the INC committed to the action return to uncommitted.
5. When all actions are resolved, the INC is over and the next begins with 1 above.

That's probably not perfect, but it gives you an idea of how you have to organize the rules.

This somewhat assumes that adventurers don't wander dangerous situations with weapons unsheathed. It will come up from time to time, but hopefully not all that often.

If that's true, then why include the rule at all? :-)

That said, I see where you're coming from. I'd like to think that weapon weight, lethality and special abilities are all more important than how quickly you can draw your sword; however, in some cases it may become important. The granularity of the system becomes important, especially at low levels.

Those other things will be optimized first, yes. So this will end up being one of those tiebreaker stats. The point is that there ought to be a way to not have any breakpoint at all. One simple way is to make readying the same for all weapons. As you say, it's not all that important. For a really cinematic game assume everyone can quickdraw so fast that they might as well just have their weapons out all the time (IOW, no draw time).

Not a huge detail.

I thought about this. Does the mental damage ability provided by Command (Influence) resolve some of this disability?

Hard to say. Sounds like a playtesting issue. :-)

I like to think they're obvious archetypes. There are probably finer, more specialised archetypes, however, ones that ignite the imagination like Bladedancer, Lumbering Hulk What Has An Axe, or Archer just under the 'fighter' heading, and Twilight can easily mix and match so you get other archetypes like Shadow Thief (who isn't a pure mage, but uses magic abilities to walk through walls and avoid guards). I'm making a note to provide fully detailed archetypes in the front of that section now. This should also address the later concern that 'suggested equipment' reinforces certain boring archetypes.

You miss the point made more eloquently by others before me. How does a player even know that a fighter is a viable choice for a game? I mean, if I'm making the setting be one that's about dealing with entrepeneurs in the world of venture capital, how do the players know what to take then?

Even amongst action heroes, your archetypes are stilted. I mean, you've got your martial artist guy, your black ops type, the tough cop, etc. Even amongs sci-fi there's types you don't support at all. What about the expert pilot? And what about the Spunky Kid for all these? How do I build him?  I mean for a game that's supposed to be generic, you seem to cater only to one thing.

I didn't hit you with #1 yet, but I'm getting close. What games are you conversant with?

Wouldn't it be easier to just assign 20 points to the stats, and then calculate Practical Attribute = ATT * STAT / 5 ? I personally think that'd be much less confusing.

It does have the problem that you don't always get a neat N/5 fraction all the time. However... see my next comment.

Um, excuse me, PA = ATT*Stat/5, round down. There.

A very valid point. There is actually a small section entitled Experience at the end of chargen that describes how to advance characters. However... the weakness of beginning characters is fairly evident.

One possible fix involves greatly advancing the starting character. What say a beginning character's stats are defined with 30 points, in 5-point increments? So the minimum you can have in a stat is 5, then 10, etc. This means that you can quickly figure attribute values and they're guaranteed not to have wasted points. Is this worthwhile as a starting default?

Well, what's your tolerance for dice? I like em, so I'd go for it.

BTW, it's hard to tell from what you have that this makes for weak characters. I mean there's nothing to compare to. I assume that you'll be put up against characters that are of similar capabilities.

That's not quite right. Basically, we around here tend to think that the idea of character "advancement" in terms of power is not a great idea. For too many reasons to go into here. Suffice it to say that most of us would agree that one ought to start out characters as powerful as they need to be to be fun to play. That often means starting them off as heroes. Or at least competent.

That said, since you have nothing to compare to, whatever level you set for starting characters is whatever level of compentence you call it. Is 30 fifths compenent? Cool.

If you were to go with rounded points for starting characters, and hence no breakpoints, then I'd go with that for advancement as well. Just require five times as much to get a point. Same effect, less bookkeeping.

If you took Heal (Self-only), however, you'd still be capable of using healing on people (it can be used untrained), you'd only get the skill bonus if you were using it on yourself.

Um, OK, but whatthehell does that represent? How can a person learn to heal themselves better than they can heal another? How can I know how to bandage myself, and not how to bandage other people? What skill can one learn that one can do to oneself, and to others that one can learn at different rates? Seems like an unneccessary complication.

It's something I should put more detail into, yes. And I should definitely emphasise the fact that if only one person in the group owns any house at all that's probably unbalanced. Yes, you should buy a horse if you're a knight. No, you probably shouldn't if your group is all knights or a band of adventurers who happen to get from town to dungeon by means of horse. Yes, it's wildly interprable. I should offer a few 'economic archetypes' to demonstrate.

"Wildly Interperable" doesn't cover it. I have no idea from that last paragraph where you're going.

Have you considered making wealth a skill that you roll against? Or just not handling it at all? That is, allowing players to buy whatever seems reasonable and leaving it at that? There are lots of ways to skin this cat.

That's not entirely true. To be perfectly honest, it's fairly closely based on the D&D3e ranger ability, but there are a lot more skills that just killing things in Twilight. It will make you better at killing things, but at the same time it will make you better at learning what makes them tick (Command), what they find attractive (Distract), what they're better at sensing (Stealth)... you don't have to use it in combat at all. "It's all right, people, I know guardian carnophages. I'll just throw a rock into the bushes and sneak past while they're distracted; their sense of sight is attrocious." I will, however, make a note to change Race Focus to Creature Knowledge and include rules on determining characteristics of members of that group from the skill.

Then you'd better include in the list those races that aren't just the "monster" races. In fact, why have a separate list at all? Just say that any race that the player knows about can be taken.

Why would I say that the game is all about combat? Well, that's not easy to explain to a person still stuck in the Matrix. Read Mike's Standard Rant #3. I'm not saying that you don't need a combat system, Neo, I'm saying that your assumptions are very far from generic. You have a definite combat emphasis in no uncertain terms.

Noted. Note to self: Add that big note explaining how skills are optional within a group and things either unneccessary or out-of-mode (like roleplaying) can be done away with. Mostly, they're just there for the people who don't really role-play too well and need a little nudge.

Normally I'm not too hot on "optional rules" like this, but this one might work. You might want to add comments on how this should be decided, and related to the players. Does everyone have a say? Is it case by case? Or must you choose one way to do it, and everyone must abide? Lots of stuff goes into this sort of decision, and if the players are not on board, lots of problems will occur.

Yeah, weapons are actually as light as they can be. However, there is a handling difference between even a light rapier and a kitchen knife - a battleaxe is going to have a marked difference to both. They won't break your arms, but weapons will slow you down ever so slightly during combat. The 'weapon weight penalty' is my answer to claymores versus dirks - a claymore will cut you in half, but a dirk will hit you first.

Um, nope. This is an artifact of RPG thinking. There is no "balance" between well desinged large and small weapons. The larger is simply superior. That is, there's an optimum size for a weapon, and it's about sword sized. Daggers are just inferior swords that people carry because it's often not polite to carry a people killing weapon like a sword (often not allowed at all).

Now, if you want to keep that idea, fine. Just realize that it's not at all realistic. There is no such weapon as the heavy, D&D, dwarven, double bladed axe. RL battle axes were quite easy and quick to wield in battle.

Hopefully I've also given some little insight into the design processes and goals I had for Twilight. Also I hope I didn't give anyone brain siezures having to read all this text. It's taken me a couple of hours to go through and accurately respond to just this one post. A very useful couple of hours I hasten to add, although I gotta go sleep now... more later.

This isn't really all that long for around here. And, yes, I think we see a bir better where you're trying to go. You really ought to take the one poster's advice and check out The Riddle of Steel. They've got a free quickstart, and a nifty combat simulator you can download.

Mike

[s/LaSH]

Well, I meant to post a resonse earlier but had a horrible Net crash that ate my response. (That was after I managed to connect at all. Not the best day.)

Anyway. I'll try to cover some issues here. Let's see, first is probably my familiarity with the diverse literature of role-playing.

Well, obviously I've played D&D. Mostly 3e, but before that Basic and a little 2e, so I can see the important changes between editions. I've owned Middle-Earth Roleplaying for years and years (although I've never really been able to play it, and I dislike the profusion of tables and have often wondered about the imbalance of the weapons, it did give me the idea for the open-ended rolling that eventually became exploding dice pools). I've taken part in a little Blue Planet at a con, which was interesting (I can't remember the mechanics very well).

I've done a lot of browsing around recently, too. I'll almost always download demo rules and the like when I see an RPG online, and although I'm a little behind in terms of actually reading them I am picking up some trends I find rather interesting... Things I've read and really remember include Ars Magica, Deadlands, Synthesis (just now), Vampire (quickstart rules, got them with a magazine years back, introduced me to the concept of dice pools), and Wushu (one of the free lite versions - I do like it very much even in the lite form, however). I've got a lot more to get through too.

Overall, I'd rate my pedigree in RPG lit as 'low-medium'.


As for the 'focus' of Twilight:

Twilight is really about tactics. It's more complicated than 'My stat is higher so I'll win'. Coming up with plans and being able to react properly is key to surviving in combat. I'll say it right now, the system was originally designed to do combat and do it well. However, the key mechanics behind it (skills and time management) are exactly the same ones used for everything else. In my short time here I've already realised that the mechanic could do a lot more.

I've read Standard Rant 3. It makes a good point. Twilight has a huge family of weapon skills and combat-related abilities. It's got a lot of physical abilities not directly related to combat, but related to physical actions often seen in adventure-type stories. Even the magic system largely assumes combat use, as the default duration is 'instant' and spells are cast at the same speed with which one swings a sword.

However, it doesn't have to be all about combat. I'm already considering creating new skills to draw attention away from combat, and for some time have been considering stripping the weapon skills down to a handful of basics (it would make more sense; I just have to figure out the specifics).

My big, important question: Is it 'too much' to include roles for, say, corporate intrigue in the same release as the combat system?

I was already considering beginning work on a follow-up release to Twilight with a very concrete setting - my 51st-century SciFi universe. Things like player resources in the fields of social liberty, available budget, and corporate intrigue would be the focus of the release. The trouble is, part of the theme of the setting is endless brutal war and I didn't want that tone to permeate Twilight's original ruleset. (And if I did gloss over the brutal war and set all the examples and flavour text in ivory towers, that would make the setting much more satirical than it's supposed to be.)

But the more I think about it, the more it seems to be a poor idea to release non-combat stuff after the core release. It's just poorly compatible. Therefore, I should really go away and write these things I refer to as 'have' rules before declaring the current 'do' rules finished, as I'm sure fresh 'do' rules will come up during the process. The second release would then include truly peripheral things, like vehicle rules, as well as a whole scat-load of setting detail (probably most of the book).

Of course, I won't actually go away and do that, I'll just write a big response to Mike's most recent post because I can think of so many statement-specific responses I want to bounce that it wouldn't fit in this post very well. And after that I'll probably spend time doing art (it is my day job, although current pay ain't too grand).

I'll round this post out by saying: Twilight currently does one thing well: combat. (And possibly magic, but that's not on the agenda yet.) It doesn't have mechanics that support personality development like Synthesis, or character goals like Riddle Of Steel. I can, however fix that. The tools are already in place with things like Allegiance and Friendship skills. More 'motivational' bonuses can only be a good thing for character-building, right?